By Bart Barry
Tuesday the WBC’s official Twitter account posted a picture of Roberto Duran embracing the late Esteban De Jesus, a picture I retweeted excitedly. Saturday, May’s edition of The Ring magazine arrived, and while it bore a cover photo of Timothy Bradley and Manny Pacquiao beneath a title that read “The Rematch Issue,” it might well have included a subtitle like “The Roberto Duran Appreciation Issue.” On page 20, Anson Wainwright captured Marvelous Marvin Hagler thrice citing Duran in his “Best I Faced” feature, declaring Duran the best Hagler faced in three of 10 categories, including its most important. On page 80, Thomas Hauser published the results of a 26-expert poll that, when asked to determine the greatest modern lightweight, found definitively in favor of “Las Manos de Piedra.”
The photo of Duran hugging De Jesus has a spontaneous sheen to it belied today by a realization nobody might have had, in April 1989, a smartphone with which to snap it. A camera was present when Panama’s greatest celebrity, some months after decisioning Iran Barkley to become the WBC’s middleweight champion, visited the bed of Puerto Rican Esteban De Jesus – the man who gave Duran his career’s first loss, in Madison Square Garden in 1972, and dropped Duran on the canvas for the first time in Duran’s professional career too, in round 1, a feat De Jesus repeated 2 1/2 years later in their rematch, a fight Duran won by 11th round knockout.
Four years later, Duran and De Jesus fought a third time, and Duran, concluding his reign of terror over the lightweight division – his record was 62-1 (51 KOs) when he vacated the WBC and WBA titles and moved to welterweight – stopped De Jesus in round 12. Before the fight Duran said he did not like De Jesus “for a lot of reasons” but then, once pressed, conceded to Sports Illustrated’s Pat Putnam, “mostly because he is the only man ever to beat me.” De Jesus, a bad man by any workable definition, got the better of Duran in prefight quotes, imparting gratitude for what he declared evidence of Duran’s squeamishness:
“I tell him that I will fight him in the street anytime for nothing,” De Jesus said. “He ignored me. For this I am glad, because I need the money.”
De Jesus murdered a man named Roberto Cintron Gonzalez 3 1/2 years later, 16 months after retiring from boxing, and was still in a Puerto Rican prison when symptoms of the AIDS virus led to a gubernatorial pardon allowing him to return to his family to die from a disease it is believed he acquired from sharing needles with a brother who also died of the AIDS virus. It is important, for context’s sake, to revisit for a moment the pre-Magic Johnson era in which Duran comforted De Jesus. It is not nearly enough to say little was known about how the disease was spreading; I recall distinctly my parents, educated and openminded folks in a suburb of Boston, deciding to forego anniversary meals at their favorite restaurant, cancelling a 10-year tradition, because the restaurant was gay-owned, and well, what if one of them inadvertently came in contact with the food?
It is impossible Duran knew any better how the HIV virus was spread, and yet there he is in as aggressive a display of humanity as one might find in a decade of searching. There is no politician’s curled lower lip or straight-armed show of hand-holding compassion. It is Manos de Piedra, instead, his arm thrust beneath his former opponent’s withered body to wrap him in a lover’s desperate embrace and ensure Esteban wherever death took him, he would go swaddled in his friend Roberto’s arms.
The photo, and the text of my retweet of it – “¡Puro Duran (Pure Duran)!” – sent me spiraling back in the 15rounds archives for Roberto Duran’s Magical Realism, a column I wrote nearly eight years ago when Duran’s shortlived tenure as a promoter, the ‘R’ in DRL Promotions, brought the Panamanian to Phoenix for an inaugural press conference that comprised more fighters than media in a fortuitous twist that allowed The Arizona Republic’s irreplaceable Norm Frauenheim and me an opportunity to converse with Duran, nearly as good a raconteur as a fighter, through more than 40 minutes of absurd and absurdly engrossing stories. Norm was through his third decade at the craft by then and didn’t hesitate to call the encounter with Duran a highlight of his time covering boxing. I was not yet in my 15th month of boxing writing but suspected something time has confirmed: The conclusion of those 40 minutes, at which I wore the scent of Duran’s cologne for the number of times he embraced me, held euphoric a moment as boxing writing would provide.
It is Duran’s enormous humanity that makes one feel ownership of his career even at a distance from it as large as mine. When I opened the plastic wrapper of The Ring on Saturday afternoon, anxious to see whom Marvelous Marvin Hagler, my all-time favorite fighter, told Anson Wainwright was the “Best I Faced,” I did not even remember Hagler and Duran had fought and expected various allusions to Thomas Hearns and Sugar Ray Leonard. To see Hagler call Duran – whom Hagler faced very near the top of Marvelous’ powers as middleweight champion, in Duran’s 82nd prizefight, one that happened 25 pounds above Duran’s prime weight and came after a 5-3 stretch that saw Duran decisioned by someone named Kirkland Laing – the “Best Overall” Hagler faced induced in me a brief and totally unexpected spike of euphoria, one whose height exceeded its brevity.
Sixty pages later, Thomas Hauser’s “Greatest Modern Lightweight” poll found Duran running away with the prize, scoring 23-percent better than runner-up Pernell Whitaker, 34-percent better than Floyd Mayweather and more than 100-percent better than Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez. Combined.
Or as the legend likes to put it: “¡Roberto Duran es extraordinario!”
Bart Barry can be reached via bart.barrys.email (at) gmail.com
